Sharpening driving and aim skills in other games before launch

Practice · Updated October 2026 · 8 min read

Which game on the shelf actually makes a player better at the driving and shooting an open-world action game demands — and which ones only share the vibe? Most pre-launch lists answer the second question. They round up games that feel similar, framed as conversation catch-up before the big release. Similarity is a fine reason to play something. It is a poor training plan.

The plan below works the other way round: name the skill first, then pick the game that trains it, then run a drill. Everything here is genre-general practice for open-world driving and shooting — the feel of one specific new game can only be learned in that game, and the final section is honest about that limit.

What open-world play actually asks of your hands

Three skills do most of the work. Driving through traffic at speed while the route keeps changing. Shooting from a third-person camera, often in short bursts between movements. And switching — out of a car and into a fight, or the reverse — without the first ten seconds turning clumsy.

A practice game earns its place by training one of those three on purpose. That is the whole selection rule.

The practice picks, mapped to skills

One exclusion, stated plainly: the realistic driving simulators — Gran Turismo 7, Assetto Corsa, and the truck simulators — are documented as training real-world outcomes. The racing sims are credited with throttle and brake finesse that transfers to real driving; the truck simulators with patience, hazard awareness, and respect for large vehicles on real roads. Those are worthwhile skills. They are not the skills an arcade open-world escape runs on, so they sit this plan out.

Driving practice: traffic, pursuits, and escapes

Work in the Horizon map, in ordinary traffic, before chasing anything. Three drills, in order:

1. Clean laps of a busy route. Pick a route across the map and drive it at speed with one rule: no collisions. A crash restarts the run. This builds braking early and reading gaps, which is where escapes are actually won.
2. Recovery driving. Start each run by making the first corner badly — too fast, wrong line — then drive out of the mess without stopping. Escapes rarely stay tidy; the recovery is the skill.
3. Route switching. Mid-route, change the destination and re-plan while moving. The drill trains the glance at the map and the decision that follows it, at speed, without a pause.

Raise the difficulty only when a drill runs clean twice in a row. Busier traffic and faster routes are progression; frustration is not.

Aim practice: third-person and open-ground

Split the shooting work between the two documented combat picks, because they ask different questions. Far Cry 5's open ground rewards picking the right target first and moving between fights. Cyberpunk 2077's dense city rewards fast target switching in clutter. Red Dead Redemption 2's slower pace is the place to rebuild basics — deliberate aim, no spraying — when the faster games start making habits sloppy.

1. Two-target switching. In any combat encounter, engage two visible opponents alternately — one shot sequence each, back and forth. The drill is the switch, not the finish.
2. Move, stop, shoot. Never fire while sprinting. Move to a new position, stop, shoot a short sequence, move again. It feels slower. It lands more.
3. Vehicle-to-foot. End a drive by getting out and going straight into a fight. The first three seconds after the switch are the drill — repeat them until they stop feeling like a gear change.

A two-week combined drill plan

Thirty focused minutes beat two vague hours, and the rest days are part of the plan, not a failure of it. A player with only three evenings a week can run Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday and lose very little — the order matters more than the volume.

What practice cannot teach you

No drill in another game teaches a new game's exact handling model, its camera behaviour, its default sensitivity, or its map. Those arrive with the game itself, and the first sessions with it will feel unfamiliar no matter how much practice came before. That is normal, and it is not a sign the practice failed.

What transfers is underneath all of that: braking before the corner instead of in it, stopping to shoot, switching targets without panic, recovering from a bad line instead of restarting the moment. Hands that already own those habits are free to learn the new game's specifics. Hands still fighting the basics have to learn both at once.

— Jack Delaney, Sports Writer